September isn’t just Suicide Awareness Month. It’s also National Recovery Month, and in construction, both conversations belong in the same breath.
Every September since 1989, National Recovery Month has set aside time to celebrate the people fighting their way back from addiction, recognize the progress being made in treatment and recovery, and remind anyone still struggling that getting better is possible. This year’s theme says it simply and powerfully: Recovery is REAL, Restoring Every Aspect of Life. That’s not just a tagline. For the people living it, it’s everything.
In construction, this month hits differently. The industry consistently ranks among the highest of all sectors for substance use, and the reasons aren’t hard to understand. Long hours, physical wear and tear, job insecurity, and a culture that has never made it easy to say “I need help” create the kind of conditions where substance use can quietly take hold. Around 15% of construction workers in the United States have a substance use disorder, nearly twice the national average. More than 16% report heavy alcohol use in a single month. And job-related injuries often serve as a gateway to dependency, particularly when pain management leans heavily on opioids.
Those numbers are significant. But here’s the part that matters just as much: recovery works. Treatment works. And the construction industry is slowly but meaningfully starting to recognize that the cost of ignoring these issues, in human terms and in business terms, is far greater than the cost of addressing them.
What does that look like in practice? It looks like workplaces that treat addiction as a health issue rather than a character flaw. It looks like employee assistance programs and leadership that understands the difference between accountability and compassion. It looks like coworkers who check in on each other and create the kind of environment where asking for help doesn’t feel like career suicide.
Recovery is possible. It happens every single day, in every industry, including ours. This September, anyone who is fighting that battle should know they don’t have to fight it alone.
To find resources, visit: https://nationalrehabhotline.org/ or, if you need immediate help, call the National Substance Abuse Hotline at 866-210-1303.
– Morgan Peta, Marketing Intern